Today in American Ethnic Cleansing

I certainly understand why we are focusing on the terrible actions of terrible sexual abusers and harassers today. Unfortunately, there are all sorts of other horrible things happening around us that also need our attention.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke told the White House she would resign once her successor is nominated, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

The reported resignation would come after White House chief of staff John Kelly and others in the Trump administration pressured Duke to end a protected status designation for tens of thousands of otherwise undocumented Hondurans living in the United States, challenging her own decision, according to the Post.

The Post, citing unnamed current and former administration officials, reported that Duke planned to resign rather than serve as deputy DHS secretary. A DHS spokesperson told TPM Thursday that “Acting Secretary Duke is committed to continuing her work at DHS.”

The report detailed Duke chafing against pressure from the White House to end TPS — Temporary Protected Status, a protection from deportation — for 57,000 Hondurans who came to the United States after Hurricane Mitch hit their home country in 1998.

Honduran and Nicaraguan TPS holders’ status had to be decided by Monday. Since the foreign nationals received the protection, each successive homeland security secretary has renewed their status every 18 months. Hundreds of thousands of people from various countries are protected from deportation by TPS.

Duke announced Monday that she would not renew TPS for the 2,500 Nicaraguans living in the United States who currently hold the status, allowing for a 12-month grace period, but that she would allow for a six-month delay to determine the status of Honduran TPS recipients, despite reported pressure from White House chief of staff John Kelly and national security adviser Tom Bossert. The Post reported:

As DHS officials prepared to make that announcement, Kelly made an urgent call from Japan, where he was traveling with President Trump. He was “irritated,” administration officials said, and didn’t want his handpicked nominee for DHS Secretary, Kirstjen M. Nielsen, to face potentially uncomfortable questions about TPS during her confirmation hearing.

“He was persistent, telling her he didn’t want to kick the can down the road, and that it could hurt [Nielsen’s] nomination,” said one administration official.

Duke held her ground, the official said. “She was angry. To get a call like that from Asia, after she’d already made the decision, was a slap in the face.”

One unnamed former administration official with knowledge of the call said “they put massive pressure on her,” the Post reported.

And sending people back to Honduras is an actual death sentence for some of them, as crime in Honduras has skyrocketed thanks in no small part to the combination of American imperialism and intervention over a period of a century, the ability of gangster to buy high-powered weapons in the United States, and Americans’ insatiable drug demands. But let’s not take any responsibility here. Why do these people want into my nice white conservative nation?